Art: The Smell of Blood & Roses

The artist is generally supposed to reflect his time, but the old saw
does not apply to the start of the 15th century. At that time, the Hundred
Years' War was still raging, and Europe had yet to recover from the ravages
of the plague. The Holy Roman Empire was hardly still an empire, and the
church was grievously split between a Pope in Rome and another at
Avignon. It was, in short, a time of disunity and violencethe very
opposite of much of its art.